From my journal:

So I didn't have time to write the last two days, so here is a short recap. It is day three in Rome right now. I managed to get to the airport with no problems (hooray!) even though my flight was slightly delayed, we still managed to get to Rome only 10 min behind schedule. I ended up sitting in front of some really loud and obnixous brits on the flight (and I thought Americans could be bad....) but met some guy from Chicago who was friendly. We ended up catching a bus to the Termini train station together and once I arrived around ten at night I met Nikki at the Station. It was soooo good seeing her!!

She walked me to my hostel which wasn't too far, I dropped off my stuff and we headed out to a local sports pub that a lot of college kids go to. At the sports bar I ended up running into Mike McBryan from my Kentucky mission trip and another girl I went to high school with! Small world huh? We ended up getting fairly drunk (sorry mom) and I took a taxi to my hostel and called it a night.

The next day (friday October 12th) I woke up around noon and called nikki. I ended up going to her apartment (which is located right next to the vatican) and we just sat around and talked for a while. It started raining so we stayed inside for the 2 hours it poured, and when the sun finally came out we headed out for some sight seeing.

We went to the Colleseum first which was breath taking to say the least. It was built in 72 AD and was a public sports arena basically. It is huge! It used to be all marble, but obviously being that old it isnt anymore. Me and Nikki walked around for about an hour and made our way to the Roman Forum. The Roman Forum is basically a sight of ancient runins from, you guessed it, ancient Roma. The are is huge, and although most of it looks like a place they have stashed a bunch of broken columns and statues, its amazing that it's still around.

We then walked to the Pantheon (which comes out of no where when walking through the streets of Rome). Raphel is buried here which I didn't know, and the architecure is actually a lot more elaborate than I would have expected. After walking around for a good 3 hours we headed back to Nikki's apartment where we stopped to get chinese food before passing out of exhaustion after a long day.

It is now saturday morning and I am currently sitting in an Irish Pub awaiting my check after breakfast. I had to go back to my hostel to get my suitcase and check out today because the rest of the group gets here today and we all got a hostel together. Italy is gorgeous and I can't wait to go see more of it!